Arizona's gun culture scrutinized

Shooting sparks debate on firearms laws in U.S.

Arizona's relationship with guns goes back a long way, to the days of the cowboy's six-gun, the shoot-out at the OK Corral and the Wild West.

While those iconic images have faded into history, Arizona's gun culture remains alive and well. This is a state, after all, where for many the Second Amendment is near sacrosanct, where driving into the desert to fire guns is a common past-time, and where it recently became legal to carry guns into bars and to carry concealed weapons without a permit.

The state's love affair with guns came under new and intense scrutiny Saturday after a gunman began spraying bullets outside a Tucson-area supermarket, killing six people including a 9-year-old girl and a federal judge, and wounding 14 others, among them U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot through the head.

Police said the gunman was a 22-year-old college dropout who was armed with a 9mm semi-automatic pistol and extended clips that allowed him to fire dozens of bullets without reloading.

The gun's firepower and the carnage it brought further fueled the renewed debate over gun-rights across a stunned nation.

Both sides of the debate focus on the question of prevention, whether restrictive gun laws could have kept a weapon out of the shooter's hands, or whether the presence of more armed citizens would have allowed someone to end the massacre as soon as it began.

The debate resonates in Arizona.

It is a state with some of the least restrictive gun laws in the country, and a state which, not long before Saturday's massacre, saw new laws allowing people to carry guns into bars and carry concealed weapons without a permit.

It also is a state where Western tradition and its culture of individual rights collides paradoxically with modern urbanism: Giffords, a Democrat from the state's second-largest city, is also a longtime gun-rights advocate and a gun owner.

Western culture

Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik was among the first to wade into the debate when he called Arizona the "Tombstone of the United States of America" while assailing the state's lax gun laws as a possible contributor to Saturday's massacre.

Tombstone is the silver mining town 65 miles southeast of Tucson that became symbolic of the violent Old West after the infamous 1881 shootout at the OK Corral between the Earps and the Clantons.

Yet Tombstone had stricter gun laws than Arizona has today, said Bob Boze Bell, executive editor of "True West," a Cave Creek magazine devoted to Old West history.

"The weird thing is they had gun laws in Tombstone and what led to the OK Corral fight indirectly was the fact that the cowboys were armed. There was an ordinance that you had to take your guns off and you had to check them," Bell said.

Bell said Arizona's gun culture is rooted in the state's rural ranching past dating back to the mid 1800s, when people fleeing federal regulations flocked to Arizona and needed guns for hunting and protection.

"There is a passionate, independent streak that Arizonans have to own firearms," Bell said. "They don't want to be usurped and they don't want to be told what to do and that runs deep in Arizona. . . . It is met now by modern culture where most of the state is urban but there is still a rural mindset, even among many of the people who live in the city."

Growing up in Utah, Les White had never seen people carrying guns openly until he moved to Arizona in 1986.

"I remember seeing people with guns on their hips and in the back of their pickup trucks. It was common at that time," said White, 37, a small-business owner who lives in Phoenix. "In some ways it has mellowed out. You don't see that too often like you did back then. But I would say we are the Wild, Wild West and Arizona is a gun-advocacy state. No doubt about it."

White doesn't own a firearm. But he enjoys driving out into the desert with a friend who owns a large arsenal of guns.

"We set up targets. It will be just simple things like beer bottles stuff like that," White said. "I've shot all kinds of weapons. Assault rifles. Well, not assault rifles but sniper rifles, the ones with high caliber bullets and stuff."

White subscribes to a strong belief shared by many Arizonans including many state lawmakers that massacres like the one that took place on Saturday in Tucson might be preventable, or at least less deadly, if everyone carried a gun.

"I think more people should be armed and know how to defend themselves so when they do encounter a lunatic they can defend themselves," White said.

Political divide

During her first year in office in 2009, Gov. Jan Brewer signed a bill allowing loaded guns in bars and restaurants, as well as another that prohibits property owners from banning guns from parking areas, so long as the weapons are kept locked in vehicles.

And in July, Arizona became the only state in the nation with a large urban population to allow U.S. citizens 21 and older to carry a concealed weapon without a permit. Only the rural states of Alaska and Vermont have similar allowances.

Lawmakers in 2010 blocked a bill that would have allowed university and community-college faculty to carry guns on school grounds. But Rep. Jack Harper, R-Surprise, has proposed the bill again this year. So far, 12 additional state representatives and four senators have signed on in support.

On Monday, Harper said Dupnik was off-base for suggesting that Arizona's gun laws played a role in Saturday's massacre in Tucson.

"The Giffords event was in Sheriff Dupnik's jurisdiction and no law enforcement was present. Sheriff Dupnik should stop blaming others for his office's lack of presence at the event," Harper said.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio also rejected Dupnik's assertion that Arizona was the "Tombstone of the United States."

"What do you mean Tombstone? What, is everybody out there shooting each other on the street?" Arpaio said.

Weighing restrictions

One thing lawmakers could do is ban high-capacity magazines like the 33-round type apparently used in the Tucson shooting, said Robyn Thomas, executive director of the Legal Community Against Violence, a San Francisco group dedicated to preventing gun violence.

"That created a huge part of the problem in and of itself," she said. The shooters in the Columbine, Fort Hood and Virginia Tech massacres used these types of magazines, Thomas said.

Magazines holding more than 10 rounds were banned under the 1994 assault-weapons ban that expired in 2004. Even during the ban, existing high-capacity magazines were still permitted for sale.

"It's not to say that would have stopped him, but it might saved lives had he not been able to discharge so many bullets so quickly without even having to stop for a moment," she said.

With a gunman willing to die during these types of shootings, it's unlikely that banning certain types of magazines would present much of a hurdle, said David Kopel, a research director at the conservative Independence Institute and law professor at Denver University.

"It would have cost him more money, but the amount would have been some number of $20 bills," he said, adding that gunmen are also likely to tap into any black market for weapons, too.

Authorities say Jared Loughner, 22, the man accused in the Tucson shooting, bought the gun used in the slayings at the Sportsman's Warehouse in Tucson. A man who identified himself only as one of the managers told The Arizona Republic on Monday that in the past year the store has only sold two of the extended clips like the one apparently used Saturday.

The last sale was in October, the manager said. Court records note that Loughner bought his handgun Nov. 30.

The manager said the extended clips are not subject to background checks and they are widely available online.

Outside in the parking lot Monday afternoon, Bill Trigg, 55, of Tucson, had just finished buying archery supplies at the Sportsman's Warehouse. He said he was bracing for calls of increased legislation against firearms, which he thinks are unnecessary.

"It comes down to the person," he said. "Their actions, their intentions, their lack of any respect for the sanctity of human life."